Some minority MPs on the Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament have blamed high taxes and levies for the astronomical\u00a0increases\u00a0consumers are experiencing in their electricity bills.<\/p>\n
Public outcry in recent times over unjustified electricity tariff resulted in the Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) directing the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), to halt a new metering system being\u00a0implemented.<\/p>\n
Subsequently, President John Mahama also promised business owners and the general public that the issue will be resolved as he announced that an inter-ministerial task force has been constituted to resolve the challenges.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”DRDdK5VE2F8qXSTWpVr8QiDGmFNXGmjh”]But speaking to Citi Business News<\/strong> in an interview, a member of the Mines and Energy Committee, Mr. Joseph Cudjoe, maintained that from the committee\u2019s interaction with the ECG and PURC, high taxes and levies accounted for the astronomical increases being witnessed recently.<\/p>\n Mr. Cudjoe cited for example that, street light levy which used to be one pesewa per unit shot up to 84 pesewas.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also another levy\u2026.the National Identity levy which also went from one pesewa to GHS1.70,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n According to him, members of the committee paid critical attention to all the components that were used in deriving the tariff increment announced by the PURC.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the ECG service charge component which PURC approved 59% for them during a stakeholder consultation, we looked at it and then compared the final percentage increase relative to the 59 % in the public. Am telling you the minimum increase you will see is 83%,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He stated that in some cases, the committee recorded as high as 94% increase in the tariff.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question really was what is accounting for the difference between the 59% increase announced by the PURC and the over 75% we are seeing. Isolating the factors, you could see that it is the tax component and the levy component which has made the bill become unacceptably high,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He stated that the situation was so revealing such that members on the minority side were ready to push for a decrease to ease the pressure on Ghanaians.<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation is not about metering at all like we were made to believe. The taxes are too high and I can tell you that if we don\u2019t do something about the taxes ordinary Ghanaians will suffer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He maintained that if the meters were the source of the problem, then the pre-paid meter users must be exempted, but the situation is not so.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth prepaid meters and post paid meter users are all complaining about the increase. In my constituency, I have had calls on how the increase is affecting businesses and households,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Citi Business News<\/strong> has gathered that the committee will visit the ECG to assess the situation on the ground.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Lawrence Segbefia\/citibusinessnews.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some minority MPs on the Mines and Energy Committee in Parliament have blamed high taxes and levies for the astronomical\u00a0increases\u00a0consumers are experiencing in their electricity bills. Public outcry in recent times over unjustified electricity tariff resulted in the Public Utility and Regulatory Commission (PURC) directing the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), to halt a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":219249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,5,171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-general","category-local-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/219249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}